


No One Visits My Grave Anymore

by We_re_in_bloody_hell



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, M/M, and one old lady, guest appearance by Matthew, inspired by a Romanian folk tale, ver very loosely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:08:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24286381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/We_re_in_bloody_hell/pseuds/We_re_in_bloody_hell
Summary: No one visits my grave anymore.It made no sense, reflected no outward change of his surroundings, yet it persisted: the creeping, suffocating sensation of loneliness, of loss and disappointment, embodied by six little words in a yearning, sad little farandole, fluttering across Will’s thoughts as he stared sightlessly at his cooling milk.No one visits my grave anymore.Inspired by a tumblr post and a Romanian folk tale (Youth Without Old Age And Life Without Death), originally for my literature class' writing contest.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 9
Kudos: 31





	No One Visits My Grave Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> Why a Romanian folk tale, you ask? Well, I'm Romanian, I had this written down for a gothic story contest (pretty sure I failed the Gothic part), and i don't care about things like "proper context" or "good characterisation"
> 
> If any of you want to check out the original tale for this, you can find it at http://www.worldoftales.com/European_folktales/Romanian_folktale_4.html in english. It's a very good translation.
> 
> This was originally in the first person and nearly all the characters were female, so tell me if you spot any editing mistakes i might have overlooked.
> 
> Bon appétit.

_ No one visits my grave anymore _ .

It made no sense, reflected no outward change of his surroundings, yet it persisted: the creeping, suffocating sensation of loneliness, of loss and disappointment, embodied by six little words in a yearning, sad little farandole, fluttering across Will’s thoughts as he stared sightlessly at his cooling milk.

_ No one visits my grave anymore _ .

Will had lived on the Three Ladies’ property for a long time, perhaps longer than he realised without stopping to think about it. It was quite probably the best place in the world to be: the neighbours were friendly enough, the land was easy to work, the Ladies were as kind and generous as any ruler he had ever heard of. All strangers, no matter how peculiar or how foreign, were welcomed with open arms, and given food and lodging faster than one could blink. Many never left again, for life was prosperous and agreeable here.

It was late summer, three days ago, that a caravan of  _ țiganii _ arrived on the beaten road to beg momentary hospitality of the Ladies. With them came music, games, and a  _ ghicitoare de cafea _ , an old, surly woman with beady eyes and a seemingly endless supply of Turkish coffee to tell the future from.

Will went to visit this coffee-seer, not out of real need or worry, because he truly had none, but simply out of the same idle curiosity that had brought his feet wandering up to the Ladies’ domain in the first place.

He had never put much stock in what  _ ghicitori _ told him: their so-called prophetic ability had always been scorned in his family after one had told his great-aunt that her husband had died away at war. While technically entirely plausible at the time, the accuracy of the guess was severely put into question by the return of said husband the day after.

The  _ ghicitoare _ had then looked Will’s great-aunt in the eyes and declared that her prophetic ability had surely been impeded by the fact that her husband had been sleeping with another woman at the time.

Surprisingly, she had made herself scarce after that.

Will therefore trudged into the dimly lit tent with nothing more than a faint sense of hilarity and disbelief, wondering whether the old woman would make guesses as to his parentage, hypothetical future wife, or own impending death first.

She watched him approach with a steely gaze, standing behind her chair. Will’s cockiness failed him for a moment and he faltered in front of her accusatory posture.  _ Why have you come? _ It seemed to scream.  _ Why have  _ I _? _

“Please, sit.”

Her voice was smoother, more melodic than he had expected, and it held no trace of her apparent discontent. Will inclined his head as he obeyed. She remained standing, and tracked him with her beady eyes. Her stillness was such that not even the fringes of her dress shivered, straight as lead strings. Without really knowing why, he held his breath. His lungs burned with the smell of incense as she appraised him like a cow at the market.

“You are different,” she said after a while. Will frowned. “You do not seek the same thing all the others in this place came here for.”

It was something Will assumed well-known that being called “different from all the others” was rarely truthful, or a compliment. People are people, and in the end they function the same.

He said as much to the  _ ghicitoare _ . She slowly shook her head and turned to her small fire, from where she removed the burning plate of incense with a pair of needlessly ornate fire tongs, and set about making the coffee.

If you have coffee beans properly ground for this purpose, it is quick and easy to make Turkish coffee: for one serving in a small cup, pour into a small pot (an ibrik) one teaspoon of coffee grounds and one of sugar, then as much water as you want to drink. From the moment the pot is on the fire, or rather the stove if you are not a dramatic  _ ghicitoare _ , keep stirring the mixture until it boils and the level rises. As soon as it does, take the pot from the fire. Repeat this last action three times, and then serve.

The coffee alighted in front of the young man in a small blue cup adorned with gold, with a mismatched saucer. The  _ ghicitoare _ did not make herself any, and did not sit down.

Will watched the fine coffee grounds settle under the surface, in a thick layer over the bottom that he would take care not to disturb once he took the cup. Then, as he finished the coffee and the layer of dregs became visible, the seer would overturn his cup into the saucer, swirl it around a few times, then read his future in the created patterns.

Will took the cup, and lifted his blue eyes back to the seer as she spoke.

“I do not need coffee dregs to tell me what I already know. You did not come here seeking what the others seek.”

“What did I come seeking then, oh wise  _ ghicitoare _ ?” his voice dripped with sarcasm and agitation, thick as the coffee and much more acrid.

She cocked her head, the pearls of her headdress glinting in the dim light, before answering:

“Nothing.”

“Then why come here at all?” He challenged, as if he himself was ignorant of his true purpose. Perhaps he was.

“Curiosity,” she retorted patiently. Her insistent, searching gaze was beginning to weigh on Will, making him squirm on the cushioned seat. He sipped at his coffee.

“And how do I satisfy it?”

The question was almost honest, yearning, surprising even Will himself, though perhaps not as much as it should have. Life was good here, on the land of the Three Ladies, it was easy and more rewarding than elsewhere. He did not have to take a wife or interact with people too much to ensure his survival, and neither did anybody else, which resulted in more marriages of love than not. Time seemed to fly by and stall all at once; people were happy, young, beautiful…

The  _ ghicitoare _ didn’t answer for some time. When she did, it was with another question, faint, almost to herself.

“Do you know what the others came here to seek?”

The coffee was more than halfway gone already, and the movement of his shrugging shoulders sent fine, barely visible coffee grounds to the surface.

“Distraction,” he surmised. “Good fortune. Riches and husbands. Answers.”

This time, Will had the distinct impression the seer was holding herself back from rolling her eyes to the back of her skull.

“I meant in the Ladies’ domain,  _ puiule _ ,” she sighed.

Will tried sipping once more at his coffee and got a pinch of grounds between his teeth for the trouble. Setting his cup down and discretely spitting into his hand, he asked:

“What did they come to seek?”

The  _ ghicitoare _ seized his cup and upended it on the saucer. She started swirling it lightly, taking great care not to spill the leftover liquid in the saucer.

“Youth without old age, and life without death,” she mused softly, eyes on the little blue cup. “You should go into the Valley.”

Startled, Will inched back in his seat.

“The Valley of Lamentations? Why?”

“Because you want to,” answered the old woman, delicately lifting the cup by its handle without turning it right side up yet. “And because you are not supposed to.”

Then she turned the cup over and peered down her long nose into it, ignoring the way Will strained forward, suddenly eager to know what she would read in the cup. Seemingly satisfied, she nodded and set it back down. Then she turned expectant eyes to the young man.

“Well? Any more questions?”

At a loss, Will gaped like a fish a moment before sputtering out:

“But… What was—what was in the cup?”

She arched an eyebrow at him as she moved back to the private part of her tent.

“Coffee, what did you think it was?”

And Will was left alone seated at the small table, with the lingering smell of coffee and incense hanging in the air around him.

Many say that to make a home somewhere, all you need is a story. The Ladies took that half a step off beat: after letting new arrivals tell the story of their journey, the youngest took them aside to walk the woods, meet the beasts and hear The Story.

The Story, unlike one might think, was not the story of how they, themselves, had found the place and founded the domain; neither was it the story of why all the beasts in the forest obeyed them and would tear apart any soul who came to their domain with ill intentions.

Instead, it was the story of the youngest Lady’s late husband. The man had been, according to her, the kindest and brightest of souls, instructed as a scholar and strong as a knight.

“He braved many perils to reach us,” she always began, her voice lilting and melodic, though tainted with sadness. “And he stayed with us, with me, for many moons, until he ventured into the Valley of Lamentations.”

She would then stop on top of a hill, and indicate the landmarks where the Valley began, before continuing:

“He was never the same after that, always so preoccupied and indrawn… then, one day he left, and never came back.”

She would lift her beautiful face to the sky and let her eyes fall shut.

“He died away from me,” she’d whisper. “I know it. I will never see the likes of him again.”

Then, as the new arrival would flounder for something to say to her, she’d walk away with all the grace of a swan crossing a lake.

The Valley of Lamentations was, simply put, forbidden, toxic territory. As long as Will had been here, no one had stepped foot into it. But there had been such people before, and the tales never differed: the unfortunate person would wander into the Valley, on purpose or accident, and they would come out changed, tear-stained and half mad, before leaving, never to be seen again.

Will debated long with himself, when he first arrived and when the  _ ghicitoare _ advised him, whether he should go into the Valley himself. In his experience, whenever something or somewhere was off-limits, getting there was worth it just to know why. That being said, the idea of exposing himself to possible madness was far from being the most appealing adventure.

Everyone, anyone would have told him not to go.

Maybe that is why he went.

After nothing horrible happened in his first few tentative steps down the slope of the Valley, Will stopped. The air felt no different; the trees did not murmur to themselves. No beast prowled threateningly towards him, or at least none he could see.

Why then did he feel such unease? He had barely walked a few steps in the forbidden territory, and no one was in sight to report him to the Ladies. Why did his breath come shorter than before, why did his stomach twist so? Was he afraid of getting caught?

He hurriedly walked a few more steps, just enough to put himself out of sight of any other villager who might happen to trundle by. The trees started looming around him, and he kept walking, slowly, the earth sucking at the soles of his shoes like it was pressing him on, drawing him further into its embrace. Little by little, all sound quieted but for the soft crushing of the soil, his calmed breathing, and one lonely bird song.

It echoed through the wood intermittently, as if its singer had lost all hope of being heard and answered, but a deep-rooted, wild yearning kept tugging it out of its little bird chest and into the open.

It was the most melancholy bird song Will had ever heard. And yet it was the one that reminded him of home the most, of his parents and siblings and the soft sounds of their little farm in the mornings.

Will had not thought of his parents for a long, long time, having left the family farm to find friendlier, more interesting land as soon as he was sure they could spare him. He could not, he realised, even guess at how much time had passed since then.

He missed them. As imperfect and nerve-grating as they had been, as irascible and jumpy his mother and drunk his father, as self-absorbed and boring he had found his siblings to be… he missed them.

His parents were surely dead, after so many years, his siblings married and with their own families, and he had never visited, even their graves. He would probably never visit his siblings’ graves either. The thought filled him, suddenly, with such deep sadness he feared drowning in it. He hoped fervently people visited his parents’ graves, brought them flowers in remembrance; they had always wished that for themselves. 

And then came the thought, the horrible, incomprehensible, illogical thought.

_ No one visits  _ my _ grave anymore.  _

More than anything else, it was that which scared him. It was that which made him turn tail and hurry on to the village, the small, safe little village that had been his home for longer than he could really remember.

Will ran, his feet pounding the ground, lungs burning with bone-deep, primal panic. A thought had entered his head. A thought that was not natural, that hinted at things that could not be, should not be. A thought Will desperately wished to escape from as one tries to escape from terrible news that make no sense upon delivery.

_ No one visits my grave anymore. _

Will ran, until he reached the village, until he reached his modest little house and dove under the covers like a frightened child hiding from the monsters, dogs barking and milling around him worriedly. But he knew monsters, knew the beasts that prowled the forest for their safety, and he did not know that thought, that nonsensical thought that had entered his head. And as all adults know, children hide from things they do not know and cannot see.

_ I do not have a grave _ , Will thought, feverishly, but that was even worse. It stabbed his heart like a barbed spear, angry and desperate and longing. So he told himself, whispered into his pillow like a prayer:

_ I am alive, I am alive, I am alive. _

But still, a little, cautious, incredibly sad voice whispered back:

_ Are you? _

Will did not return to see the  _ ghicitoare _ . He spent the rest of the day under the covers, staring unblinking at the window until the sun set and rose again. Then, he dragged myself out of bed, painstakingly, for his daily walk around the domain.

Instead of choosing a new route in the hopes of discovering more of the beautiful nooks and crannies of the woods, he took the one he remembered the best: the one he had taken to arrive to the domain.

The idea of novelty was suddenly unbearable to him.

Down the road he walked, offering polite smiles that felt like a wax doll’s melted face had been twisted into a parody of a cheery smile to make her look less threatening. No one seemed to notice, thankfully. It wasn’t all that strange to see him walking around in the morning, always setting off in new directions, surrounded by bounding dogs.

A green-eyed boy with a cheery smile caught his eye and waved at him, abandoning his shovel for an instant as he came bounding down the path towards Wil. He fell into step with him, gently bumping their shoulders together. Will forced myself to summon a more genuine smile.

“Hello, Matt.”

Matthew had been a resident of the Ladies’ domain for longer than Will, and yet still appeared a young and energetic boy barely into adulthood. He was friendly and handsome, and, according to Will’s neighbour Alana, had his sights on Will.

“Are you leaving us?” asked Matt worriedly. Will shook his head a little.

“Just… not feeling very well,” He told him. It wasn’t really a lie, just… an understatement. “I thought I’d take a walk on a path I already know for once.”

He laughed, the sound clear as a bell.

“I’m honestly surprised there still are paths in the forest you haven’t walked! You do look a bit pale, though. Have you been to see the  _ ghicitoare de cafea _ yet?”

A shudder trickled down Will’s spine, cold water on an already lukewarm day. He shook his head no and hoped Matt wouldn’t see him trembling.

“Maybe you should,” Matt suggested with a wink. “I’m sure she’d predict you a bright future, that might cheer you up!”

The smile was starting to feel less like melted wax and more like a painful grimace carved in wood. Will nodded, not trusting his voice.

Matt bumped their shoulders once more, smiled warmly, and went back to his work. Will kept on walking.

Soon, he was alone with his dogs, scuffing his shoes along the dusty, ill-used path. The air was heavy with the promise of rain; the wind bore a hint of petrichor on its wings, and the lush green trees bordering the path seemed to yearn for a long-awaited shower.

Will slowed to a halt some seven hundred meters from the edge of the domain. Standing still, he stared at the old, simple wooden gate marking it, letting the muted sounds of the forest wash over him.

Will very carefully did not consider leaving. Life was good here. It was easy. He should not throw it away on a moment of madness caused by his own damning curiosity.

Soon enough, the horrible thought that the Valley of Lamentations had put into his head would fade, and Will would enjoy this easy, unchanging life once more, without feeling like a fly stuck in amber while the outside world went on without him, forgetting his very existence.

Will shuddered once more and tore himself away from the sight of that understated little portal.

As he turned on his heel, he spied out of the corner of his eye a set of colours that didn’t look like it belonged in the green-and brown landscape. A figure in black and white tones – was that a man? Was he lost? The woods were full of dangers for those the Ladies hadn’t properly welcomed. 

Will called out a few times, but the only answer he got was his own voice being carried back by the wind.

Maybe his eyes had deceived him in his unstable state. It was impossible that someone had gotten through the beasts and would refuse to show themself to him. Tipping his head back, Will took a look at the rainclouds amassing overhead, whistled once, and started on his walk back to the village.

Will went back to the road the day after, and again a movement at the corner of his eye made him look sharply to the side only to vaguely glimpse the image of a handsome man dressed in black and white traditional dress. He walked a bit further than the day before, in case the man decided to come out. Or so he told himself.

He went again in the afternoon, neglecting the mending he needed to do on some of his shirts. They seemed to tear more easily, these days, looking as thin and fragile as he felt.

Again, Will was tormented by visions of the handsome man. He seemed… hopeful, yet melancholy in his posture, although Will could never gaze upon his face long enough to see anything more than his beauty.

Will went even further that time, almost to the edge of the Ladies’ domain. Beasts were prowling every inch of the woods this close to the boundary, and he hoped the handsome man was in fact just a shy villager, who was known to the beasts and thus protected from them, and not some unfortunate soul who had only barely escaped the beasts. He shuddered to think what might become of him otherwise.

Then, on the third day, Will met the handsome man. Leaving his cold milk undrunk, leaving behind hims any food, supplies, or dogs he usually took on walks, he went back to the beaten road in the early hours of dawn, before anyone had woken up.

It wasn’t on purpose; Will had found himself sleeping less and less lately, picking at his food, forgetting his drinks unattended. His thoughts were plagued, haunted, hunted down and slaughtered by the invader, that foreign thought which made no sense but hinted at unbearable explanations.

_ No one visits my grave anymore. _

Will walked, and walked, and walked. He passed the sleeping houses, half-guessing their shapes in the latent moonlight, stumbling on rocks and holes and the imperfections of the beaten path; he passed the lantern marking the entrance to the village, its light burning low; he passed the slumbering beast at the edge of the forest, who snuffled sleepily at the hem of his pants; he passed the bench marking the halfway point to the small wooden gate.

And, without thinking about it, letting his feet guide him as he had when he had left his parents’ farm, Will passed the gate itself and left the Ladies’ domain.

He walked without pausing, without thinking. His feet seemed to know the way, and so far they had never led him astray. The one time he had gone somewhere that had brought him distress was when he had gone into the Valley of Lamentations, and he had had to think about it.

For these decisions, thinking is no use. Your gut knows where you should go, and your feet will take you there.

Will saw the man out of the corner of his eye, ethereal in his black and white dress, his brown hair and tanned skin reflecting the moonlight back at him. He did not turn his head, did not call out to him as he had done before. The man would come, in due time.

And, as the sun began to rise behind him, colouring the sky red, he did.

He appeared to Will's left like a vision out of a dream, his face beautiful, his posture impeccable, his dress immaculate without a hint of dirt on it.

Unerringly, he fell into step besides Will, a silent, reassuring presence at his side. It made him feel stable, focused, and suddenly Will knew where his feet were bringing him.

He was going home.

The village Will had grown up in wasn’t all that far from the Ladies’ domain, which only made him feel more uneasy about never visiting his family. He marvelled at the feeling: just a couple of days ago, he would have shrugged it off and kept on doing his tasks for the Ladies. But then again, even now the desire to see what had become of his family wasn’t what was propelling him forward.

“Does the fact that I care more about my unvisited grave than the fate of my family make me a bad person?” Will suddenly blurted out, without looking at his travel companion.

“It just makes you a person,” the man replied, tranquil, as if that were an obvious thing. His voice was the sweetest sound Will had ever heard, cool and calm as deep mountain lake waters. “Humans are, by nature, self-centred.”

Will nodded and brushed their knuckles together in thanks. The man hummed, like a little cat purring at the contact.

“No one visits my grave anymore,” Will told him, his voice raw. “So I’m throwing my whole life away to visit it myself. What does that make me?”

The man was silent for a while, slowly intertwining their fingers. Surprising even himself, Will let him do it, not minding the contact in the least. 

“There are more graves unvisited than not. The dead do not care about this sort of thing. Doesn’t the fact that you have a grave bother you more than whether people visit it or not?”

Will took a shuddering breath and held the man’s broad, strong hand tighter.

“Graves are meant for remembrance,” his voice shook slightly on the words. He was beginning to get winded from the walk, but the roof of his childhood farm was peeking over the next hill. “If no one visits mine, doesn’t it mean I have been forgotten? Isn’t that worse than being thought dead?”

“Not thought dead,” the man mused back. “ _ Supposed _ to be dead.”

Will chuckled weakly.

“My family is dead, aren’t they.”

“I do not know.”

They fell silent after that, because Will had trouble catching his breath while walking up the hill. His hand felt rough and wrinkled where it was holding the man’s hand, and wisps of grey hair were falling in his eyes, only to be brushed away by the handsome man’s blessedly cool hand. Three days before, Will would have been able to run up and down the hill with nary a pause to catch his breath; but then again three days ago he had been living in the Ladies’ domain with no thought of leaving.

They reached the top of the hill. The village spreading out before them was familiar to Will, while changed so much he could scarcely believe his eyes: it was bigger, with more unknown houses than he remembered, yet all was in a state of disrepair that could only have been brought by time, centuries of time passing like waves eroding the bluff. No one lived in these dilapidated houses anymore, but Will could still see, through his increasingly blurry vision, signs of occupation that had lasted many years: new walls having been erected, roofs that held up better than the house itself, clearly having been renovated more than the walls holding them up, vestiges of what used to be well-tended gardens, now overrun with weeds and reclaimed by the local fauna.

Will closed his eyes against the dizzying onslaught of information. This wasn’t the village he had left, it couldn’t be. The houses he remembered best now looked centuries old, and it had grown before being abandoned.

It couldn’t be the village he had left. But it was, and the sight of it only confirmed his deepest, darkest doubts.

Will felt a tug on his hand as the handsome man gently, gently steered him down the hill, carefully choosing the path that would be kindest on Will’s trembling knees. He was heading to the little church that had been theirs, nestled in the centre of the village cemetery… or rather, the old cemetery, as Will could see shiny, polished tombstones a little further off, marble and coloured stone rather than the simple grey slates the village had always used.

The man led him by the hand through the rows of crosses and heavy grave headers, before stopping before what was clearly a family lot.

Will lowered his eyes to them and began reading.

His mother and father were buried together, dead a decade apart and forever together. His brothers had taken wives from the village, girls whose faces Will could barely remember. His sisters had married too, but rather than being buried in their husbands’ family slots, their husbands had chosen to be buried in theirs: his family must have been one of the richest around at the time. Some of his siblings had died young and unmarried; some of his siblings’ children the same; some were buried with their husband or wife. Will could see the markings where the old walls of the family lot had been pushed back to make room for new arrivals.

And, at the end of the row where his siblings lay, was a small grey header with no tomb attached.

On it was carved his name, his date of birth, and a blank space for his date of death.

Will remained staring at this small, unassuming mark of his time among these people, of his time on this earth. He would have no other: no one had ever died in the Ladies’ domain. There was no cemetery to remember those who left, and the inhabitants’ memory was particularly short where these were concerned.

His face was wet with tears, and yet Will felt nothing but peace. He turned to the handsome man, finally looking at him straight in the face. The man looked hopeful, yearning, beautiful like nothing Will had ever seen.

“I have kept you waiting, haven’t I?” he asked gently, taking both the man’s hands in his to bring him closer.

The man’s smile held all the hope and sorrow in the world.

“Centuries upon centuries,” he replied softly, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. Will smiled at him and caught one with his thumb as it rolled down his sharp, perfect cheekbone.

“Good things come to those who wait, I suppose?” Will huffed slightly, embarrassed despite himself. He no longer felt the effects of the old age that had set upon him as he left the Ladies’ eternally youthful domain. His eyes and ears were clear, his back straight, and Will could only see and feel  _ him _ .

The man shook his head at him, slowly, as if afraid that taking his eyes off Will would make him disappear.

“You are not a good thing,” he protested without heat. “You are the only thing to me. My everything. I would have waited for you many more centuries if I had to, and never would I have abandoned you. I only hope my brethren who lurk around the Fairies’ Land get to experience the joy I feel at having you come back to me.”

Arms outstretched and heart full of love and relief, Will embraced him, his beautiful compagnon so long forgotten, his lovely, faithful Death.

**Author's Note:**

> Pro tip for reading your future in Turkish coffee: do not leave the cup upside down that long.  
> Also it makes a good substitute for watercolours.  
> The part with the seer telling someone their husband had died at war really happened to my great-great-aunt.  
> ... Please leave kudos and comments?


End file.
